A wee story

I wanted a Medlar tree for a little space behind the garden that I have been planning and digging. I didn’t know where I was going to get one. They are not commonly available from nurseries, like other fruit trees.

There's a house I was working at just the other day. I do landscaping for work. I had met the son of the parents who own the house one late fall night. This son does, I am fairly assuming, most of the work around the place, which he enjoys. My boss knows him and his family and took me there that one night after work to see all the wonderful stuff he grows. They are Italian. We were introduced, and he showed us around the property as dark fell.

The family does everything themselves. Make their own wine, make their own juice, make their own bread, make their own crackers, make their own cheese, make their own pizza (in a beautiful brick outdoor stove), make their own pasta, slaughter their own meat, grow their own figs, kiwis, beans, grapes, and on and on.

On that fall night he mentioned, among the immense repertoire of trees and plants, he had a Medlar.

So, the other day we were trimming hedges for him in the front (he had a recent accident that temporarily prevented him from doing this work), and as we were gathering up felled limbs, I figured I would mention that he mentioned that he had a Medlar the last time I was there.

Honestly, my sole intention in mentioning it was simply because I wanted to see a Medlar tree, which I had never seen before (in the flesh), and which I never got to see that time that I visited in the dark.

He says right away, "Oh I got seven of them. You want one?"

"I would love one".